Unknown White Male

Update 2/18/2006: According to Cinamatical, the veracity of the story this film tells is in question:

Ever since the Oscar-nominated Unknown White Male (review here) premiere at last year's Sundance Film Festival, there have been rumblings that the story it tells about Doug Bruce's memory loss and subsequent new life is too strange to be real. Additionally, everyone in the movie is good-looking and smart, which is a little suspicious in a film that's supposed to be about real life. Some at Sundance went so far as to suggest that the film was an elaborate joke, much like Peter Jackson's cheeky Forgotten Silver, which fooled all of New Zealand before it was revealed to be a mockumentary. In a recent GQ article, Michel Gondry - who semi-seriously wonders if the inspiration for UWM came from his own Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - admits that he doesn't believe Bruce, but has never been willing to confront him about his doubts.

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From a review in Cinematical of the film Unknown White Male, a documentary about someone named Doug Bruce who has to rediscover who he is after finding himself riding a train with a nasty bump on his head and no memory of who he is or where he is going:

Rather than lamenting the loss of the “old Doug,” everyone still in his life - from Magda to his father; from his sisters to the friends with whom he partied and vacationed - eventually begins to accept him, though they’re disconcerted by what their friendship with the “new Doug” does to their memories of the person he used to be. As Magda - who, like almost everyone else in Bruce’s life, is uncannily wise and articulate - puts it, “By getting used to who he is now, he’s...undermining his previous self...Getting used to the new Doug...sort of erases the old Doug for me.” Despite their philosophical unease, however, one of the most fascinating developments in the film is that everyone who talks on camera envies Bruce on some level. Even the friends who come across as the most laddish and immature come to see his amnesia as a kind of opportunity. Looking at their old/new friend from the perspective of people just settling in to true adulthood (Bruce and most of his friends are in their early-to-mid 30s), they clearly ache a bit for the chance to start over; to redefine themselves. Rather than being stuck in a rut, Bruce is learning from the world every day, and is able to cut ties with the people from his previous life with whom he no longer feels a connection. Who among us wouldn’t relish a chance like that?

A documentary touching on the real life desire that many of us have to reinvent ourselves or start fresh seems like like an interesting take on the classic amnesia themes that we are used to.